A/66/255 WASHCost (www.washcost.org) and the UN-Water Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water, are taking important steps towards better monitoring of financing for the sectors and ensuring improved access to information for individuals and institutions. Human rights budget monitoring work has increased substantially in recent years, offering important tools to civil society and other stakeholders to demand access to information and track budget allocations with a view to holding Governments accountable for meeting their human rights obligations. This work involves disaggregating budgets by region and group and can have a profound impact on understanding whether funds are being allocated in line with human rights obligations. Public expenditure tracking is also important for assessing whether funds have actually been spent in line with the stated intention in the budget. 69. Even transparent budgeting can seldom account for the additional off-budget resources spent on water and sanitation by international donors and non-governmental organizations, which often wish to manage their projects independent of Governments. The resources expended on these projects are then almost never recorded in national budgets. In cases in which States rely on international contributions for the majority of their work in the water and sanitation sector, this means that Governments and communities have little knowledge of how much funding is actually available. In Malawi in 2006, for example, it is estimated that off-budget spending by non-governmental organizations was as much as three times the reported annual budget for water and sanitation. 99 70. A lack of transparency may also impede accurate measurement of resources when States enter into contracts for service delivery with the private sector, particularly as bidding processes and contracts tend not to be made public. 100 The Special Rapporteur has emphasized the importance of transparency in private sector participation, particularly noting that the final contract and terms of reference must be available for public scrutiny and comment (A/HRC/15/31, para. 36). Private contractors have also sometimes intentionally underbid, artificially lowering costs in order to win contracts and then securing more favourable terms in bilateral renegotiations of contracts, a practice which the Special Rapporteur has highlighted as contrary to human rights requirements. 71. In all forms of financing, a lack of transparency can create incentives to siphon off resources, to make or accept bribes, or to engage in other unsavoury behaviour. These activities translate into added costs that are rarely reported, leaving Governments and individual agencies without a clear notion of how much money is actually available for water and sanitation. 101 For instance, Transparency __________________ 99 100 101 11-44364 African Ministers’ Council on Water, Getting Africa on Track to Meet the MDGs on Water and Sanitation; a Status Review of Sixteen African Countries (December 2006), p. 47. Nila Ardhianie, “Water privatisation in Indonesia”, in B. Balanyá and others (eds.), Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory, 2005), p. 227; and Violeta Petrova, “At the frontiers of the rush for blue gold: water privatization and the human right to water, Brooklyn Journal of International Law, vol. 31, No. 2 (2006), pp. 577-614. World Water Council, Third World Water Forum and Global Water Partnership, Financing Water for All, p. 10. 23